From the point of view of all the major belligerents, the war of 1914 was a preventative war - Discu

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From the point of view of all the major belligerents, the war of 1914 was a preventative war - Discu

"...in a preventive war, one side foresees an adverse shift in the balance of power, and attacks to avoid a more difficult fight later."

`Van Evera's definition of preventive war, though limited, is useful when discussing the attitudes of the belligerent powers towards the July crisis and eventual war of 1914. Van Evera's article is also useful for discussing the responses to July 1914 on a thematic level as opposed to a country-by-country account. A similar approach is also adopted by A.J. Mayer's article on the reasons for the 1914 war. I will begin by discussing their arguments, then move onto a general survey of the major belligerent countries and finish with my conclusions.

`As the title of Van Evera's article suggests, Van Evera is concerned to identify and explain a phenomenon he labels the "cult of the offensive." According to Van Evera all the major belligerent powers were infused with the belief that future wars would be offensive, decisive and short. The offensive attack as the supreme form of defence was predominant in the military of all the belligerent powers; Schlieffen (Ger.), Knox/Hawking (Brit.), Joffre (Fr.), Hötzendorf (A.H.) and Sukhomlinov (Russia) all extolled the virtues of attack and ignored the consequences of the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars.

`This idea may seem irrelevant to the question yet it raises some important points. Given Van Evera's definition and theory one could argue that the belligerent power that mobilizes or strikes first or even initiates and hastens a war is still fighting a preventive war and given that all the powers believed in a sophisticated form of "attack as the best form of defence" it can be further argued that all the major belligerent were fighting preventive wars.

`The other aspect of Van Evera's article worth mentioning is his idea of "Windows".

`For Van Evera, the cult of the offensive leads to the creation of windows - of opportunity and also of vulnerability. A window of vulnerability will lead to a preventive war, opportunity to an aggressive, expansionist war (one of Van Evera's problems is a difficulty defining what type of war results from a combination of the two windows).

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`Van Evera is quite black and white when categorizing the belligerents - the Central Powers suffered from windows of vulnerability and thus fought preventive wars whilst the Entente powers perceived mainly windows of opportunity and so were aggressive.

`I find this argument ultimately fails - Van Evera bases his view of the Entente powers solely on the fact France and Russia mobilized first which actually contradicts his earlier argument and his own definition! His definition itself, as I stated earlier is limited as his thematic view blinds him to the domestic/internal situation of the belligerent countries. The concept as whole ...

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